PLENARY TALKS

Why is Uncertainty Theory Useful?

Abstract

When the sample size is too small (even no-sample) to estimate a probability distribution, we have to invite some domain experts to evaluate their belief degree that each event will occur. Since human beings usually overweight unlikely events, the belief degree may have much larger variance than the real frequency. Perhaps some people think that the belief degree is subjective probability. However, it is inappropriate because probability theory may lead to counterintuitive results in this case. In order to distinguish from probability, this phenomenon was named “uncertainty”. How do we understand uncertainty? How do we model uncertainty? In order to answer those questions, an uncertainty theory was founded in 2007 and then became a branch of mathematics for modeling human uncertainty.
This talk will introduce some fundamental concepts of uncertainty theory and discuss why uncertainty theory is useful. This presentation is based on the speaker’s book Uncertainty Theory published by Springer-Verlag, Berlin (http://orsc.edu.cn/liu/ut.pdf).

Biography: Baoding Liu received his B.S. degree in 1986 from Nankai University, and his M.S. degree in 1989 and Ph.D. degree in 1993 from Chinese Academy of Sciences. He joined Tsinghua University as Associate Professor in 1996, and was appointed Professor of Mathematics in 1998. Dr. Liu's research led to the development of uncertainty theory that is a branch of mathematics for modeling human uncertainty.